Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Amazing $1 Microcontroller (2017)

jaycarlson.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 199 posts

Re: The Amazing $1 Microcontroller (2017)

#151

Post by wiml »

jwr wrote: post #139
83 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone building up some home automation I'd love to know how you are monitoring and controlling power. Remote power strips? Replacement outlets? Something diy?

For household energy usage monitoring, I installed an off-the-shelf DIN rail power meter with LEDs. I ignore the meter readout, but the LEDs give off a brief flash every Wh or so (don't remember the scale, but it was precise enough) — these flashes are processed by three phototransistors hooked up directly to I/O pins of a microcontroller, generating interrupts. This results in a safe, reliable and simple monitoring…

I might be misreading your post, but there's nothing stopping you from using a gcc+make+$EDITOR workflow with the Kinetis or MSP430 chips either. I've done both, it's not even painful. (Admittedly I haven't worked with MSP430s in about a decade, maybe the situation has changed, but it seems unlikely.)

Re: The Amazing $1 Microcontroller (2017)

#153

Post by stevekemp »

sickrumbear wrote: post #60
blhack wrote: post #47

I feel obligated to mention in every one of these threads the wemos D1. I actually have a tough time explaining just how incredible this board is. You can program it in the Arduino environment, meaning if you are doing any hobby electronics, you're probably already really familiar with the programming modalities. It comes with a programmer, and power regulator. No fussing with anything like you might have to with a b…

this looks really cool! any project write-ups online that show how it can/ is being used?

Multiple projects posted if you search my practical project involves polling a remote API to display tram departures

https://steve.fi/Hardware/helsinki-tram-times/

But you also find out about constraints too. Driving an epaper display without running out of RAM was a fun challenge:

https://steve.fi/Hardware/d1-epaper/

Re: The Amazing $1 Microcontroller (2017)

#154

Post by CloudNetworking »

fenwick67 wrote: post #149
cr0sh wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you in the United States? I'm just curious how your homeowner's insurance feels about this? That is, will they still pay out for a claim should something happen, and they determine your modifications were at fault? Because if the adjuster or whomever does find you have such modifications - they -will- blame those. And probably deny your claim and coverage (and probably cancel your policy). At least that would lik…

"Because if the adjuster or whomever does find you have such modifications - they -will- blame those. And probably deny your claim and coverage (and probably cancel your policy)." I'm skeptical that an insurance company will be able to determine exactly what part you used and if it was UL listed unless you yourself tell them

They don't need to. They'll just claim it was and you'll have to take them to court if you want to counter-claim that.

Re: The Amazing $1 Microcontroller (2017)

#156

Post by unwind »

ChickeNES wrote: post #119
microtonal wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do like them, I have a supply of Wemos D1 Minis ;). I also like the Robotdyn Blue Pill (STM32, fun for playing with Rust). Regardless, I find the minimalism of the ATtinies interesting too, but haven't made the plunge yet.

> Robotdyn Blue Pill (STM32, fun for playing with Rust). $3.49 is great, nice find. Hopefully now that Espressif has unveiled their fork of LLVM you (as well as myself :P) will be able to use Rust on the ESP chips soon enough.

For regular STM32F103C8T6 blue pills, of course there are lots of sellers on AliExpress that go lower. The lowest right now [1] is listing them for $1.53.

That said, it's really confusing how much flash memory are on these. The community seems to find that they list as 64 KB, but in reality ST has been shipping the part with 128 KB without saying. I have two black pills (slightly different board, same MCU) but the one I tested only has 64 KB. :(

1: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32839140960.html?productId=3...

Re: The Amazing $1 Microcontroller (2017)

#157

Post by candiodari »

microtonal wrote: post #25
neya wrote: post #8

My favorite is the ATTINY 85. It's so cheap and yet, it can do almost most of the things you can do an Arduino. And yes, you can program it using the Arduino IDE as well. Last year, I started out to digitalize my entire house with these tiny ATTINY 85 chips and with some nrF wireless chips. It has worked really well for me and I'm able to control and monitor any power port in my house as well as my mains. The overall…

My favorite is the ATTINY 85. It's so cheap and yet, it can do almost most of the things you can do an Arduino. And yes, you can program it using the Arduino IDE as well. How do you deal with the small number of pins? The NRF24L01+ uses SPI, which requires 4 pins. There are some guides on how to hook up an NRF with 3 pins. I think that only leaves 3 pins (besides VCC and GND)? The ATtiny seems to be very attractive o…

I wrote a firmware that lets me turn any attiny into a gpio-to-i2c and supports in-place-upgrade also over i2c.

Now I have up to 20 extra gpio for 0.5$ or so. This is not very hard.

Re: The Amazing $1 Microcontroller (2017)

#158

Post by jokoon »

ahirjay3979 wrote: post #2

How to use this

Those usually can't even run a linux kernel, so you directly compile your program in C, you run it and that's it.

It's very light on power, which mean can be turned all day without worry.

To be honest I don't know how I would use this, because it's really really minimalist, doesn't have wifi, not enough memory to run a lightweight webserver, too slow to run a python interpreter...

I wish there was something in-between a micro controller and the raspberry pi, so I can just run a minimalist webserver with some SSH, no usb plugs, only wifi. The raspberry also must also explicitly sets the SD card as read only, because it has a limited lifespan.

The rpi is cool, but I wish there was a cheap, entirely open smartphone, that should be the next step... I guess there is a market for it, geeks would really buy it. I'm not a fan of building android apps, and most smartphone specs are way too fast and expensive for what I would do with them.

Re: The Amazing $1 Microcontroller (2017)

#160

Post by neya »

cr0sh wrote: post #69
neya wrote: post #8

My favorite is the ATTINY 85. It's so cheap and yet, it can do almost most of the things you can do an Arduino. And yes, you can program it using the Arduino IDE as well. Last year, I started out to digitalize my entire house with these tiny ATTINY 85 chips and with some nrF wireless chips. It has worked really well for me and I'm able to control and monitor any power port in my house as well as my mains. The overall…

Are you in the United States? I'm just curious how your homeowner's insurance feels about this? That is, will they still pay out for a claim should something happen, and they determine your modifications were at fault? Because if the adjuster or whomever does find you have such modifications - they -will- blame those. And probably deny your claim and coverage (and probably cancel your policy). At least that would lik…

I'm not in the US, so maybe that's a consideration for these type of projects.
Post reply on HN